Sites on the History and Literature of Western Hierarchical
Relationships

This site provides information about fiction and nonfiction focussing on
historical hierarchical relationships in the West – that is to say, relationships
between people of different status or rank. Relationships based on platonic
feelings and relationships based on sexual attraction are both discussed
at this site.

Before 1700, most Western relationships, whether platonic or sexual,
were based on hierarchy. In the eighteenth century, societal changes occurred
that brought about the rise of egalitarian relationships, both amongst
people who had platonic relationships with each other and amongst men who
had sexual relationships with each other. Male/female sexual relationships
would remain primarily hierarchical until the twentieth century.

As far as the history of same-sex attraction is concerned, its hierarchical
aspects are documented at three gay history sites. Paul Halsall's People
with a History provides links to historical images and texts, while
The
History of Male Love showcases historical art. Rictor Norton's Gay
History and Literature is primarily made up of essays, bibliographies,
and links, but the site is worth noting here because the editor is interested
in the topic of hierarchy – for example, the site includes an essay on
Class-based
Erotics, which explores the role of class hierarchy in male/male, male/female,
and female/female sexual relationships.

As Paul Halsall has pointed out, the history of heterosexuality remains
to be written. However, sites devoted to women's
history usually provide documents showing women's places in hierarchies
of the past.

Likewise, the history
of friendship has been much neglected: at present, no site collects
historical texts on friendship. My essay on scholarship
about friendship ends with links to a few Greek and Roman writings
on the topic; among other things, these classical writers discuss the role
of hierarchy in friendship.

The best source of fiction on historical hierarchical relationships
(whether based on platonic feelings or sexual desire) is older literature,
much of which is available online. Alas, I've yet to find an e-texts site
that divides its fiction into subjects more specific than "Romance" or
"Science Fiction." This is in marked contrast to older popular literature,
which tended to divide itself naturally into "types," much as popular literature
does today.

Fortunately, one online archive has taken note of this fact and provided
easy searching options for its holdings: the Digital
Tradition Folk Song Database, which has about 9000 entries. If you're
not familiar with traditional folk songs, you should know that they're
the predecessor of genre fiction, with lots of bloodcurdling drama and
tearjerker plots. In fact, "tearjerker" is one of the keyword
options, allowing you to pull up all songs of that type. You can also
search for your hierarchy of choice, whether it be "captive" or "lord"
or "apprentice." The database can be downloaded for offline use.

If you're searching for modern fiction, Barnes
& Noble.com not only allows its visitors to search through fiction
by genre, locations, and time periods, but also has a useful section called
Fiction
Subjects. Within this section, the best place to look for books on
hierarchical relationships is in the section entitled Character
Types, which has such entries as "Aristocrats & Bluebloods" and
"Peasants." However, subheadings for hierarchical relationships are scattered
throughout the Fiction Subjects section, so you may wish to browse through
the headings.

The Library of Congress also divides
fiction by subject headings; since its headings are used by most American
libraries, you may be able to locate books this way through your local
library catalogue. You can ask whether your library has the book entitled
Library
of Congress Subject Headings, which will help you to select the headings
you're interested in. This is also available online as Library
of Congress Authorities, though the book is easier to browse through.
The site isn't very user-friendly for non-librarians, but there's a FAQ
page that explains what authorities are, and if you simply plug a subject
into the search
engine (for example "queens fiction"), you'll get the gist of how the
site works.

The only readers who seem to have gone to the trouble to subdivide their
genres into types of relationships are readers of romance and erotica.
All
About Romance, for example, offers a Special
Title Listings section in which books about male/female romance are
divided by subject, such as "Guardian/Ward Romances," "Pirates & Vikings
et al," and "Friendship." Many of these novels are set in historical periods.

It is much more difficult to locate lists of this sort that are devoted
to homoerotic romance. The literature section of the excellent glbtq
encyclopedia discusses hierarchical relationships in many of its articles
on historical literature, but there is no central article where the role
of hierarchy in historical gay and lesbian literature is clearly outlined.

Historical fiction is not yet a widely recognized category of same-sex
fiction; thus, there are few resources available on this subgenre. (The
few that I have located on the Web are listed at Homoerotic
Historical Fiction Links.) Online, the largest number of same-sex romance
sites that are devoted to historical fiction can be found in the slash
community, which produces primarily (but not exclusively) fan fiction,
either romance or erotica. The central location for historical slash is
the Slash Cotillion, which
has extensive links and recommendations lists. It is possible to do a search
within the site for certain types of hierarchical relationships, but not
many.

In more recent times, various gay subcultures have experimented with
hierarchical relationships for both sexual and nonsexual reasons, most
notably the leather community. The history of leather in the second half
of the twentieth century – including information on leather novels and
stories during that period – is explored at my own set of sites, The
Leather Research Reference Shelf.

In the end, readers interested in locating stories about historical
hierarchical relationships must often do the hard work of slogging their
way through general lists of older literature and historical fiction. Hopefully,
the day will come when one of those readers will compile a resource that
will assist the rest of us.

CONTACT INFORMATION

You're welcome to e-mail me. I should
warn you ahead of time, though, that I won't be adding new links to this
site. Of course, I've said that before.